rerun
Americanverb (used with object)
noun
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the act of rerunning.
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a showing of a motion picture or television program after its initial run, usually some months or years later.
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the motion picture or television program being shown again.
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Informal. a person or thing that is merely a restatement or imitation of something familiar; rehash.
The plot is just a rerun of every other spy story.
verb
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to broadcast or put on (a film, play, series, etc) again
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to run (a race, etc) again
noun
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a film, play, series, etc, that is broadcast or put on again; repeat
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a race that is run again
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computing the repeat of a part of a computer program
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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rerunsimple
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rerunssimple
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have rerunperfect
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has rerunperfect
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am rerunningprogressive
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are rerunningprogressive
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is rerunningprogressive
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have been rerunningperfect progressive
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has been rerunningperfect progressive
Past
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reransimple
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had rerunperfect
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was rerunningprogressive
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were rerunningprogressive
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had been rerunningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of rerun
Explanation
When a TV or radio station plays a show again, after its first broadcast, that's a rerun. You may have grown up watching reruns of the shows your parents loved when they were kids. Use rerun as a noun, for the show itself, or a verb, to describe the process of rebroadcasting it: "They rerun this movie every year at Christmas time." When someone used this word in the early nineteenth century, they were talking about races being rerun, or run again. It was first used to mean "television rebroadcast" around 1955.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The security measures follow a cheating scandal that forced a rerun of a test taken by two million prospective medical students.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026
Barker wisely fashioned “Obsession” as a contemporary movie, taking inspiration from a “Simpsons” rerun and revamping it into something the socially conscious, explainer video-addicted YouTube audience might enjoy.
From Salon ● Jun. 4, 2026
The news conference itself felt at times like a rerun of the previous launch news conference when the fight was first revealed.
From BBC ● Apr. 9, 2026
“The risk of a rerun of last year’s tariff chaos has clearly increased, but the situation is still a long way from reaching that degree of disorder.”
From Barron's ● Jan. 19, 2026
A rerun of Arletta Paisley’s show was on that evening.
From "Hope Springs" by Jaime Berry
In its earliest days, TBS aired old movies and comedy reruns, and was also the home of “Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” Turner’s effort to blend his passion for ecological conservation with educational programming.
From Salon ● May 8, 2026
“Seinfeld” went off the air 28 years ago, but its cultural relevance has endured as reruns draw new generations of fans.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 1, 2026
But after every major network passed, he re-approached CBS, where then-CEO and President Les Moonves was game to try original programming during summertime when reruns caused dwindling viewership.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 25, 2026
Flagship shows such as the 7.30 evening current affairs programme and its breakfast shows on Thursday will not go ahead, with reruns, pre-programmed shows and BBC content to plug the gap.
From BBC ● Mar. 24, 2026
But whenever you’re reading a whodunit, or watching Law and Order reruns on a Sunday night, you find yourself sorting through candidates to be the criminal on the grounds that they are “too obvious.”
From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith
Even so, “when he and Russell reran their data set of opinion articles through the current version, the underlying assessments were similar to those in the earlier iteration.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026
If you reran the referendum, despite the opinion polls you'd get a very similar result.
From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2023
Hoping to clarify the dates for sites containing Châtelperronian and proto-Aurignacian artifacts, Djakovic and colleagues reran the radiocarbon analyses performed by other teams representing 17 sites across France and northern Spain.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 13, 2022
Kull said that in response to that criticism, they reran the study in 2018 and incorporated those arguments.
From Washington Post ● May 26, 2022
Times article about the Freedom Writers reran in a New York paper.
From "The Freedom Writers Diary" by The Freedom Writers
It is hard to imagine a state ordering a rerunning of primaries under new districts to gut old Section 2 districts.
From Slate ● Apr. 29, 2026
Once a show reached the 100-episode mark, it could be sold into syndication, filling up daytime programming schedules for local television stations, rerunning on cable networks or outside of the United States.
From Reuters ● May 22, 2023
And Marple was certainly an inspiration for Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher in the long-running “Murder, She Wrote,” which may currently be found rerunning on HMM and via Amazon Freevee/Prime Video.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2022
But a Labour party spokesperson said that the party under Sir Keir was looking to the future, "not rerunning old arguments".
From BBC ● May 25, 2021
I kept rerunning the dream all day until the coach’s whistle blew and he called “Race-off!” and there I was, heading across the field to the starting line.
From "Crash" by Jerry Spinelli
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
